Jurgen Klopp has revealed he wants Liverpool to “start perfect, be fantastic in the middle and have a world-class finish” as he looks ahead to his first full Premier League season.

The Reds get their season underway with a tough-looking trip to the Emirates to face Arsenal on Sunday with the manager happy with his summer work in the transfer market and refusing to put a limit on his ambitions for the year.

Liverpool‘s rivals may have been spending big - Manchester United and City especially - but Klopp believes it still gives them no guarantees about what will be capable of being delivered on the pitch.

The summer may have allowed Klopp to put his own stamp on the Reds’ squad - with departures as much as arrivals - but he insists it has been his team since the moment he signed his contract to come to Anfield.

Klopp said: “I decided before I signed the contract that this would be my new team. I know it was something of an excuse for me (last year) that ‘I didn’t sign these players’ but I never felt like this. It’s not my kind of thinking.

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“We did what we thought made sense for us (transfers) and what we need and until now it’s absolutely good.

“The players will not be an excuse for me, that I say ‘ah sorry’. It’s my job from the moment they sign, we share responsibility. They are responsible for their performance but of course I’m responsible too. It’s 50/50 so let’s try to do the best.”

In the past Alex Ferguson suggested the runaway Chelsea titles in 2005 and 2006 had made him change his old method of managing Manchester United to reach a peak in the later stages of the title race but Klopp isn’t sure there is an ideal strategy to try to mount a title challenge.

“I think the best way is starting perfect, being in the middle fantastic and having a world-class finish - that’s a new strategy!” he said.

“I’m sure there are 100% different ways (to win the title). I became champion one time in 2012 when we (Dortmund) had a bad start, after being first the year before. We ended the season with 81 points, the most points ever then until Bayern took the record the next year.

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“So there are different ways to roll. We cannot change the fixtures, at the end you have to beat them all - or as often as possible - if you want to succeed, that’s how it is. There is not one way.

“You cannot ignore the influence of being a little bit lucky with the players. ‘Is he fit or not?’ I’m sure we all trained hard and did our best in pre-season with the players who were available.

“In the end it’s a mixture of course, our knowledge on the sideline and the potential of the players and how much we trust each other, how confident we are together about the way we’ve chosen.

“Which way is better? In the final third of the season you need to be in a position where you have chances for everything. You’ve got to go through summer - is this still summer? - autumn, especially winter and then you see the line and you’ll be in the race.

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“Good results of course grow confidence. But as always, what was first, the confidence or the results? Leicester are a good example, at first they were not too confident but then they became more and more confident.”

Klopp recalls Claudio Ranieri in his office at Anfield on Boxing Day after his Leicester side had lost 1-0 to the Reds and the Italian trying to convince him there was “no chance” of his side going on to lift the title.

“But four weeks later! They already believed.”

Many believe Leicester benefited from their light schedule of games last year and are applying the same logic to Liverpool this year, with the club not involved in Europe.

The Reds boss will appreciate the extra time but is not happy about being out of the European arena.

“There is absolutely nothing good about not being in Europe, only more time to prepare the next game,” he said. “Is this the only way to be successful, no?

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“So do the right things in the right moments. Be perfectly prepared, use the situation when you need to have fresher legs than the other team.

“Leicester had three weeks holiday during the season. I remember when i read that Ranieri gave them a week off and we had four games! When we met them after Christmas I think we had had about 13 games and they had five. It was unbelievable, it was a big advantage last season.”

Klopp takes his team into the season on the back of a weekend of contrasts, a superb 4-0 victory over Barcelona at Wembley followed by a chastening 4-0 defeat on his return to Mainz just a day later.

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“Mainz sounded like a good idea a few months ago, we had the offer of both games and I thought we could do it, we’ll have enough players by then, we can play two different teams, but we couldn’t obviously,” added Klopp.

“When we arrived at Mainz at 2am in the morning I thought ‘who had this idea?’ I could not blame somebody, I tried to blame the cat but it was not his decision. So of course we have to build on this.”

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While there have been seven new faces arrive at Anfield this summer, the manager hopes that extra consistency can be achieved through adding quality to a core of players retained from last year.

“I said we saw a lot of wonderful signs last year and I said we don’t have to change a lot,” said Klopp. “Now we have seven new players, that’s a lot, but we still have consistency because we still have all our main players from last year.

“That’s the quality increase which we wanted to have, to add to the quality we already have.

“We had quality but we brought in different skills. With Sadio, with Gini, with Joel and Ragnar. You know more about these players before, maybe not too much about a 30-year-old centre-back but he’s really strong and that’s how it is.

“Joel had a few little injury issues but is now in a good way too. Loris, you saw before he broke his hand, is a really good goalkeeper. So it was good. It’s what we meant when we said ‘build on last season’ so now we have to prove that our idea was a good one.”